[Note:  An earlier and slightly different version of this review was originally posted at http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com]

Tempo:
Timing, Tactics and Strategy in Narrative-Driven Decision-Making

by Venkatesh Rao
(Ribbonfarm, 2011; 154 pages)

Reviewed by Chet Richards
July 25, 2011

A good book is read more than once while accumulating copious notes in its margins and on the blank pages that the publisher has thoughtfully provided before and after the text. Venkatesh Rao has written a good book. Continue reading →

One of the pillars of Boyd’s framework is the idea of playing off the expected (zheng) against the unexpected (qi).  It’s an ancient principle, a component of shih, the title of the fifth chapter of the Sun Tzu text.  In some form or another, it is incorporated into all frameworks that descend from Sun Tzu, including the Marine Corps’ maneuver warfare doctrine and the various forms of lean.

Occasionally the principle itself gets rediscovered.  You may be familiar with the “Wow! Factor” or Tom Peters’ “the Pursuit of Wow!”

Here’s one of these from the Wall St. J. last Friday.

A couple of comments:

1.  “Exceeding expectations” is OK, but it makes it sound like “expectations” is a linear scale and all you have to do is score higher.  He’s on the right track, but there’s more to zheng / qi than a freebee every now and again.  For one thing, if that’s your approach, then customers will come to expect it.

2.  And there’s something I don’t like about “under-promise, over-deliver.”  Something about it just makes me uncomfortable.

Still, his conclusion that “… when you give them something more than they expect — faster service, extra help, more options, early delivery and so on — you end up with the loyal, raving fans you need to propel your business into the stratosphere” is certainly consistent with what we expect from zheng / qi.

How to Turn Customers Into Loyal, Raving Fans

By MIKE MICHALOWICZ

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304203304576447823427183788.html

Do you want satisfied customers or do you want customers who are so thrilled with your company they become loyal, raving fans? I’ll take option No.2. Satisfied customers may come back a second or third time; they may even become regulars. But unless you exceed expectations, your satisfied customers could just as easily become your competitors’ satisfied customers.

Read more (subscription required)

About the Author

Mike Michalowicz is the author of “The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur.” He is an advocate of a business philosophy by the same name, believing the greatest business successes come from underfunded, inexperienced entrepreneurs. His website is http://www.ToiletPaperEntrepreneur.com.

When asked this question, Motolola Mobile CEO Sanjay Jha gave a most interesting answer because he talked about culture rather than limitations of the iPhone4 or iPad2.  He noted that companies have a tendency to adopt a defensive mindset when they have had a run of market successes.  He did, however, suggest that Apple is well aware of this problem, which is one of the most difficult in strategy (“Victory makes you stupid,” attributed to the elder von Moltke).

You might also note an interesting take on zheng/ qi (cheng / ch’i) near the end of the interview.

http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2011/06/22/t_ls_motorola_apple.fortune/

Tomorrow I fly from Atlanta to LA, where I’ll be holding a seminar and giving a keynote at the Lean Software and Systems Conference 2011.

When I made the reservation, my wife and I were traveling the Southland looking for a place to retire.  But I had to fly from somewhere, so I chose Atlanta faute de mieux.

Well, as luck would have it, the right answer was Savannah.  Delta, in its down home customer-oriented way, said “No problem.”  We’ll fiddle with our computers for 30 seconds and reprogram you out of SAV (through ATL, of course) for a mere $800. Additional.

Or, I could buy a one-way, SAV-ATL, for $300, connect with my original reservation, and drive my second car (now in storage in Atlanta) back to Savannah.  I don’t know how far SAV is from ATL, but you can drive them easily in about 4 1/2 hours.  $300.

At this point, I decided to check Greyhound.  For $55, they took me from downtown Savannah, which is closer to my house than the airport, to ATL in that same 4 1/2 hours.   The bus had leather seats, free WiFi, and no charge to check a bag (which they hand you about 30 seconds after you get off the bus).  Left and arrived on time.

So the airline was charging six times as much to get me there maybe 2 hours earlier.

Obviously the number of routes where this trick will work is limited, perhaps to cities 300 or so miles apart.   But at least here in the East, there are a lot of those.  If the bus lines can keep their level of service up and their prices down, it’s going to be hard for airlines to hold on to that chunk of the business.  Ironically, the most successful US airline, Southwest, started not as competition for other airlines but for busses — short point-to-point routes at high frequency and low cost.

[Those of you familiar with Boyd’s strategies may recognize a little cheng / ch’i here.]

[using the updated English transliterations for cheng and ch’i]

A vivid example in today’s Wall St. J. illustrating how Toyota let its Lexus brand lose the magic it has had for 20 years.  Here’s the punch line:

Mr. Dailey found the interior of the BMW 328xi more to his liking, and bought one. “In the most basic of 3 Series you still feel a little pampered,” Mr. Dailey said. “In the Lexus, it was a different story” [referring to the “awful plethora of plastic trim” inside a comparably priced Lexus.]

The idea of zheng / qi is that you engage with the expected, zheng, while closing the sale with the unexpected qi.  This is the same pattern described in Chapter 5 of Sun Tzu’s Art of War, but applied in a way appropriate to business.

The zheng / qi pattern is an aspect of the ancient strategic principle of shih, and for a good introduction, you might consult David Lai’s short monograph, “Learning From The Stones: A Go Approach To Mastering China’s Strategic Concept, Shi,” available from the Army’s Strategic Studies Institute.

I explore some of the implications for business in chapter VI of Certain to Win.

“The study demonstrates that the same regions of the brain that become active in response to painful sensory experiences are activated during intense experiences of social rejection.”  http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-illuminates-pain-social.html

This is edging close to the Boydian framework. The full title of “Strategic Game,” for example, is Strategic Game of ? and ?, where the question marks are “interaction” and “isolation.”

Perhaps of more importance to business, Boyd puts huge emphasis on maintaining the moral ties that hold groups together.  For example, he suggests that “moral defeat” could be considered as “Triumph of fear, anxiety, and alienation over courage, confidence, and esprit when confronted by menace, uncertainty, and mistrust.” (Patterns 121)

To avoid “moral defeat,” organizations should work on improving their agility and internal harmony, while using such tools as Auftragstaktik to pump up initiative.  The result will be more cohesive, effective groups and a possibly less painful overall experience.